World War II Online is a Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter based in Western Europe between 1939 and 1943. Through land, sea, and air combat using a ultra-realistic game engine, combined with a strategic layer, in the largest game world ever created - We offer the best WWII simulation experience around.

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Tiny road side posts shouldn’t stop/spin a tank either yet they do. This is the same issue preventing bullets from passing through wooden doors/walls etc as though they were stone walls. In this game a collider is just a collider with no logic to it beyond “you shall not pass”

having an imperfect solution isn’t a reason to not implement said good solution for the time being. If we wait for perfect .... well its been 17 years already.

I agree that the infantry-running-through-bushes status quo is bad. Would a bushes-are-made-of-super-titanium solution be better, or different but equally bad?

This seems like another one of those unanticipated-consequences situations.

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I'd venture that we don't have much to lose in the short term from trying impassible bush lines. Ideally, infantry would be able to cut through them slowly crossways and tanks able to push through them based on speed and mass. Until that day though, impassable lines would be the better of the two options. It would also cut down on trucks flying through the fields at full speed.

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Come on guys! Silent movable FRUs almost destroyed this game in the past. We do not need to bring them back.

I do not even like the current HC rifleman-only FRUs - they can still do a lot to destroy ZoC (especially for the ATG game).

And why do the current HC FRUs have no timers for redeploment? They can be moved immediately after being placed. Its totally stupid.

We better not be going back to silently warping armies - or I will unsubscribe from this game.

How did FRUs almost destroy this game when we had more players and better battles during their existence, and have fewer players and more stale battles without them?

But even then they weren't perfect by any means. Their major flaws? They allowed special infantry units to spawn (most notably AT-capable infantry), and any person could reset the FRU simply by staying alive and taking mission lead. This proposal handles both of those issues and provides for more action to occur.

And how are infantry spawned from an FMS any less lethal to ATGs than infantry spawned from a FRU? An eFMS out in the field prevents the establishment of a new ZoC just as well, if not better, than an eFRU does. The FMS and the ZoC that sometimes comes with it (better chances of successful ZoC when overpop) can still exist alongside a Light Infantry FRU.

My biggest gripe with the FMS is that it takes a decent population for them to work properly. It's very hard to set up a successful attack while underpop with the FMS (a lot harder than with a FRU... although as a member of the team with 50% more players on their bench I'm not sure if you are capable of understanding krazydog). The best attacks I was able to set up while we were underpop during C159 were mainly a result of my placing of the HC FRUs during those select AOs.

You know what happens when you try to attack while underpop with the truck-based FMS? Even if you can get 3-4 FMS set up, you won't have enough bodies available to establish a proper ZoC at even one of them, let alone 4. Must be great having enough players to do all that!

Since the introduction of the FMS, every DO plays out to the exact same script now. If you're overpop, you have enough players to spare to go truck/eFMS hunting the moment the EWS or AO drops, and most of the time the attack ends before it even begins. That's not a battle, that's not action, and that's not fun. If you're underpop you simply don't have enough population to both defend your DOs and get the necessary manpower on the attack that is needed for an FMS-based attack to work.

I really can't illustrate it better than the following example:

A group of 4 defending riflemen can halt a 4 truck attack by having each rifleman go after a single truck the moment EWS is set off. In order to overcome that through combined arms (soldiers coming along to defend the trucks), there need to be more attackers than defenders. Even if those 4 attackers group up as 1 truck and 3 supporting soldiers, the 4 defenders will always be able to concentrate their defense in the correct area and be at a numerical advantage since they have people not in a truck. The only way to overcome that with the truck based-FMS is with total surprise/lazy defense or considerable overpop.

The underpop side doesn't have the manpower necessary to overcome that obstacle, and it leads to horrible attacks for the underpop, and poorer attacks in general for any side. Why that isn't obvious to some people is absolutely mind-boggling.

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How about, instead of continuous colliders for all of every bush's visual volume, each bushline instead had a collider-plate every ten feet or so? The plate would be across the width of the bushline, so that it presented its thin edge to observers to either side of the bushline.

Then running (or driving) longitudinally through bushes would be impossible, but driving (or running) crosswise through them would be possible...though tanks and trucks likely would have to approach slowly and feel their way through to make sure they were between collider-plates.

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Just for some perspective, I stopped playing before the FRU was introduced, came back during the era of the FRU, and left quickly thereafter. The FRU is a virus that should never be released from the lab ever again.

Unless you have a mechanic where you prevent mobile spawns from being placed in any direction around a town without any regard to realistic front lines it will become a silly game of whack-a-mole like it was back in the day with ninjas appearing out of every bush. Limiting them to no AT-capability is nice for the tankers, but what about the guys who have ATGs set up? The FRU makes it impossible to set up ANY defensive line or perimeter whatsoever since the FRU will always popup at the point where the line is the weakest. If you can't place a FMS without a reasonable distance to town, sorry to say it but your attack has failed. Time to cut your losses, tip your hat to the defenders, and either come up with a new plan or (after 1.36 comes out) decided you want to grind out an attrition battle.

All the FRU does is promote the paradigm of avoiding battles and trying to sneak-cap objectives.

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again, if bushlines are physical obstacles why can't an ATG setup a ZOC? infantry can no longer just phase around the battle field and every bushline can be used to break up the open ground leaving a lot of pie slices/squares where you can somewhat predict where the enemy can come from.

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again, if bushlines are physical obstacles why can't an ATG setup a ZOC? infantry can no longer just phase around the battle field and every bushline can be used to break up the open ground leaving a lot of pie slices/squares where you can somewhat predict where the enemy can come from.

Mostly because some enterprising infantry will jog around behind your lines and plant a FRU there, and all of a sudden there is a small army that has appeared to the rear of your defensive line. Trucks planting a FMS "behind the lines" are already annoying enough, but at least you can defend against them. Trying to stop every lone infantry from sneaking past is an exercise in futility.

I agree that using the bushlines to help break of the terrain is a good idea, but the entire mobile spawn paradigm needs to be geographically limited to only certain parts of the imaginary front line to avoid the crazy 360 battles which hinge more on surprise capture than actual fighting. I vividly remember trying to defend a town with ATGs back in the FRU days. It was terrible since EI would literally come from every possible direction.

If the problem is that it is too easy to defend CPs/too hard to attack and capture them, the solution shouldn't be, in my opinion, to create a new sneak-capture mechanic. Rather, make it easier to capture the CP by decreasing capture timers. Capturing CPs is always a question of how quickly the attacker can get to it after being killed and the same for the defender. We should work to promote solid battles for CPs that require combined arms and teamwork. Reintroducing the FRU I think does neither as it promotes the avoidance of battles by the very virtue of the FRUs design (easy to sneak in, spawns lots of units, no restrictions on where it can be built).

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How about, instead of continuous colliders for all of every bush's visual volume, each bushline instead had a collider-plate every ten feet or so? The plate would be across the width of the bushline, so that it presented its thin edge to observers to either side of the bushline.

Understand that the bush you do that to, is also possibly the bush beside the front gate to your AB or the bush standing over there by itself that you suddenly slam into an invisible collider on.
(Or why the EI you have just put 7000 rounds into is sitting beside the bush giggling)

You could put trunks, with some branches into the bushes.
infantry could still wiggle between them crosswise, once they got used to it, but sprinting down the bushline as if it were a tunnel
would be kind of an exploration of human pin ball as you keep slamming into them repeatedly and having to run out and back in or go prone and try crawling beside them
(which means you are no longer running the bushline freeway if you are reduced to having to do a lot of crawling)

That does mean if you go hauling cross country in any vehicle, and decide slamming through the hedgerow is a good idea, unless you can slide over the top of it somehow, you will probably be in for a quick surprise, but there are plenty of bush line breaks to move vehicles through.

It also means you can still reasonably fire through hedgerows, unlike the titanium bushes of yore.

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Bushlines in my view should be lowered in height so tanks can engage each other at range, and like you said adding in a stump, rock, or some other solid object that would require some navigation around it would do a lot to help the situation.

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Bushlines in my view should be lowered in height so tanks can engage each other at range, and like you said adding in a stump, rock, or some other solid object that would require some navigation around it would do a lot to help the situation.

Dont know that i would lower them, per se.
Right now you notice the variance of bush types is a bit lackluster i guess you might say?
Leave some bushes tall, since sometimes they were, trade some out for a smaller bush of some sort.
So you have areas where you can shoot over, and areas where maybe you can try to be not noticed.

Probably be nice if some could not be so dense and blobby? (is that a word)
Depends i guess on what the resident speed tree expert could do with them that is a compromise between nicer and not dumping someone's frame rate in the toilet.

EDIT
Oh also, i did vote no.
When you could go crawl for 30 minutes and type .msp and pop out forces right behind some guys tank
or in the rear side of his town after he took the care to cut all the bridges.
There was a few seconds of Mwuahahahaha, now i got ya, but then it was quickly replaced by this just doesn't feel right
Doesnt feel real etc.
If i had creeped and crawled with 20 other guys for 30 minutes to get there ok, no one noticed 20 guys?
But the one guy on auto walk, and poof enemy in your behind just never felt right, just was no fun in to for me
even if i was on the winning side of the equation.

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let's add another type, larger and then use these to begin live testing bushes with colliders.

fps is fine, just get a faster cpu ;-)

*edit* fwiw according to steam stats 100% of steam users have SSE3 support and 95.5% have SSE4.1 support. SSE2 was added how long ago? may be something to look at while moving to 64bit. *2edit* might consider AVX extensions too since CPUs with support for AVX first began shipping in 2011 - January for Sandy Bridge Intels and October for AMD first gen Bulldozers - 86.81% adoption on steam stats. anyone with a CPU that doesn't support those will barely be able to play the game as it is.

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How did FRUs almost destroy this game when we had more players and better battles during their existence, and have fewer players and more stale battles without them?

But even then they weren't perfect by any means. Their major flaws? They allowed special infantry units to spawn (most notably AT-capable infantry), and any person could reset the FRU simply by staying alive and taking mission lead. This proposal handles both of those issues and provides for more action to occur.

And how are infantry spawned from an FMS any less lethal to ATGs than infantry spawned from a FRU? An eFMS out in the field prevents the establishment of a new ZoC just as well, if not better, than an eFRU does. The FMS and the ZoC that sometimes comes with it (better chances of successful ZoC when overpop) can still exist alongside a Light Infantry FRU.

My biggest gripe with the FMS is that it takes a decent population for them to work properly. It's very hard to set up a successful attack while underpop with the FMS (a lot harder than with a FRU... although as a member of the team with 50% more players on their bench I'm not sure if you are capable of understanding krazydog). The best attacks I was able to set up while we were underpop during C159 were mainly a result of my placing of the HC FRUs during those select AOs.

You know what happens when you try to attack while underpop with the truck-based FMS? Even if you can get 3-4 FMS set up, you won't have enough bodies available to establish a proper ZoC at even one of them, let alone 4. Must be great having enough players to do all that!

Since the introduction of the FMS, every DO plays out to the exact same script now. If you're overpop, you have enough players to spare to go truck/eFMS hunting the moment the EWS or AO drops, and most of the time the attack ends before it even begins. That's not a battle, that's not action, and that's not fun. If you're underpop you simply don't have enough population to both defend your DOs and get the necessary manpower on the attack that is needed for an FMS-based attack to work.

I really can't illustrate it better than the following example:

A group of 4 defending riflemen can halt a 4 truck attack by having each rifleman go after a single truck the moment EWS is set off. In order to overcome that through combined arms (soldiers coming along to defend the trucks), there need to be more attackers than defenders. Even if those 4 attackers group up as 1 truck and 3 supporting soldiers, the 4 defenders will always be able to concentrate their defense in the correct area and be at a numerical advantage since they have people not in a truck. The only way to overcome that with the truck based-FMS is with total surprise/lazy defense or considerable overpop.

The underpop side doesn't have the manpower necessary to overcome that obstacle, and it leads to horrible attacks for the underpop, and poorer attacks in general for any side. Why that isn't obvious to some people is absolutely mind-boggling.

Ok I see the issue with underpop side challenges on making AO.

I also fully see where Krazydog is coming from. And I also think if ML inf FRU were available majority of spawn points will turn into them as they are sneakier.

——-

How about overpop or balance side normal FMS only... underpop side gets to do ML FRUs for only their AOs

So as primary means for attacks and defenses are ONLY truck FMS based (fine with hc one barly can fi d use for it personally) but in situations of extreme pop imbalance the underpop side gets an edge by being able to attack with inf FRU.

In principle I agree with @krazydog . The inf fru almost killed the game of ZoC setup.... which is what game should be... less instant action, more team based play. But I am also for giving the underpop side an edge along side spawn delay and dynamic cap timers.. etc etc..

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If you want to spurn on something then give Paratroopers a faster cap timer then regular ground troops. Reason for faster cap timer is as simple as risk and reward , being dropped over an active AO should have its reward .

And put that silly notion of FRU and expanding the spawn list to rest already.

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I also fully see where Krazydog is coming from. And I also think if ML inf FRU were available majority of spawn points will turn into them as they are sneakier.

——-

How about overpop or balance side normal FMS only... underpop side gets to do ML FRUs for only their AOs

So as primary means for attacks and defenses are ONLY truck FMS based (fine with hc one barly can fi d use for it personally) but in situations of extreme pop imbalance the underpop side gets an edge by being able to attack with inf FRU.

In principle I agree with @krazydog . The inf fru almost killed the game of ZoC setup.... which is what game should be... less instant action, more team based play. But I am also for giving the underpop side an edge along side spawn delay and dynamic cap timers.. etc etc..

The sneak factor shouldn't be as big of an issue as in the past. Only one unit can set/reset the FRU, and that unit is severely limited. This time around, if you kill the Mission Leader then no more FRU resetting. No more ninjas.

I mean look at where we are today with HC placed FMS. They are rarely utilized. Do you think adding SMGs and LMGs instantly makes the FRU a better alternative to the near-unlimited FMS (which can spawn all infantry, ATGs, and AA)?

The underpop thing is not the only issue (although it is a rather glaring and obvious one). The biggest issue that everyone should have with the FMS is the overall lack of action compared to the FRU days.

========

This is yet another example of where the "realism vs fun" comes up and the realism fairies are pushing the bill too far.

@aismov@dre21@B2KDo you guys understand that there is less action overall with the FMS than with the FRU? You are all willing to sacrifice action (and by an extension of that, more population) just because the Inf FRU hits your "realism" funny bone? At a time when the game is begging for more bodies, you want to continue on the course making battles hard to occur, which leads to less action, which leads to less reason to log in, which leads to fewer people playing?

Let me ask everyone this. What is more fun to you: Killing off an enemy attack before it even gets started by killing a few trucks, or fighting a battle in the town where the attackers are pushed out?

When a CP is capped, action happens. When a spawnable CP is capped, action flourishes. If Infantry FRUs mean more battles and more action because more people can actually attack, that should be something everyone wants more of. When there are no attacks, there is no action. When there are fewer attacks, there is less action. That is a fundamental, undeniable truth of this game. And guess what? The FMS leads to fewer sustainable attacks.

16 hours ago, delems said:

While I voted yes, my concerns with bridges and silent armies behind you is big.

Think it best to not have them on further thought - so change my vote to no.

Rather, cut capture times in half (4 min is disgustingly to long) and allow MS to be placed closer to enemy facilities - say 200m.

Finally, cut the build time from 60 sec to 30 sec.

Even though delems is on the fence, even he is offering up ideas that increase the amount of action available because he recognizes we could use more of it. This game has historically been geared towards the defender, and the FMS just doubles down on that concept AT THE EXPENSE of the underpop side.

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If you can't place a FMS without a reasonable distance to town, sorry to say it but your attack has failed. Time to cut your losses, tip your hat to the defenders, and either come up with a new plan or (after 1.36 comes out) decided you want to grind out an attrition battle.

This comment needs to be singled out and addressed, particularly from an HC perspective. First off, re-read the first sentence in this quote. The fact that a defender can easily stop an attack because trucks are so easy to track down and kill MEANS LESS ACTION.

Failed attacks are bad for gameplay.

If an HC officers sets an AO, EWS gets set off, and the defense is out in the fields before the AO even activates, that AO is over the vast majority of the time. It takes about 5 minutes for that AO to even go up after I issue the order, and another 10 minutes before I can issue the pull order, then another 5 minutes before that AO actually gets pulled. And AOs are almost never pulled that quickly, so in reality, each failed AO removes AT MINIMUM 25 minutes of potential action in the game. And do you think everyone immediately despawns once an AO is pulled? Maybe if you're lucky, the vets do, but once the vets leave and the mission lead passes to the green tags, they generally have no idea what is going on and will often stay spawned in an area with zero going on, and never play the game again.

Therefore, failed AOs are bad for player retention.

So let's say we want to set up a new AO after that huge waste of time I illustrated above. Well, it's not always as easy as picking the next town down the line. Some targets are bad for a number of reasons (they extend your line and/or shorten the enemy's line if captured, brigades might become cut off, etc.). For your good targets, you won't always have the FBs. Taking them down takes another what, maybe 10 minutes if you are lucky enough to get assistance and the enemy doesn't spawn in? Spawning in to defend an FB that is being damaged without any current AO related to that FB is the equivalent of killing off trucks before they get a chance to place an FMS. No FBs = no attacks = no action.

All of that takes even more time, time where players aren't getting action. Each set up takes an enormous investment in manpower that rarely is effective, and so fewer people are willing to participate in those set ups, which again increases the delay between the last failed AO and the next upcoming AO.

In most parts of the map, you might have an average of 12-15 towns on the front, of which half are usually "good" AOs. It's pretty easy to tell which AOs are good for you enemy, and therefore which FBs need the most watching, which adds yet another obstacle to starting an attack. Provided you even have control of the FBs necessary, cycling through the same 6 towns every 40 minutes is extremely unsatisfying gameplay for most people, especially considering their chances of success.

Do you think people want to wait nearly 40 minutes in between AOs just for the CHANCE to see action? No. What happens is people will flock to defense because the action is easier to come by, since the other side is bringing the action to you. And that lean towards defense just increases the chances that AOs will not produce any action.

If we have Infantry FRUs, we can leave an AO up for a while after the first wave and try it again without reducing our chances of success. But with the FMS, all it takes is 1 guy to leave a 2nd account AFK in the old AO to listen for the truck audio, at which point they can relay to their side that an attack is imminent, even before EWS gets triggered, and rally enough defenders to once again stop the enemy attack before it even starts. We had longer, more sustained AOs with more fighting and better battles with the Infantry FRU.

Does everyone understand that? Does it sink? Do you understand how bad the FMS can be in regards to generating action as compared to an alternative like the VERY LIMITED Light Infantry FRU? Have you noticed how when the campaigns are balanced pop (basically look at the last 3 Allied campaigns with WHIPs), they take a LOT longer to resolve? A big reason for that is because of the population demands that an FMS-based attack requires. When pop is balanced, it's very difficult for either side to set up a successful attack unless the other side is sloppy on defense.

And I'm not even asking for a full return to the Inf FRU as it was OR a removal of the FMS. I'm asking for a small expansion of what already exists in the game, one that will provide more action, increase player numbers, and increase player retention, while removing some of the old FRUs worst features.